insideflash

Great question, in the past storage guy = storage buyer, DBAs were pretty indifferent...but today we're seeing more DBAs actively involved in infrastructure and even storage decisions.

More and More the buyer is both, the value prop and the conversation is different. best meeting we have are with both in the room at the same time!

More and more these days the DBA has a greater role in the decision around storage and acceleration technologies. I believe that has triggered the trend to enable DBAs via plug-ins & other apps to work with storage.

Database is extension of storag,e so both.

It's a bit of a purchase by committee I think - can't ignore either constituency imo - oh and don't forget about the apps guys

Here's a question- how much self-service should we provide DBAs with array copy services out of OEM? If the array has no capacity or SLA risk, let the DBAs control their destiny?

@fenselau I love that concept - absolutely agree - let the DBAs have self-service - they don't want to talk to the storage guys anyway!

oldie but goodie fm @dfloyer on flash cost projections http://wikibon.org/w...

tiering requires identifying what to tier and then take action. Modern, consolidated environments including too many databases/VMs/etc that each have their hotspot. The death of the hot spot has already happened.

In my humble opinion capacity considerations are important. For example, will the database fit on an AFA array? Should AFA be reserved for production and QA and less critical databases on a flash first array?

That's an application question - important to remember Flash is much more than performance - EMCs industry leading Hybrid Platforms along with the industry leading #XtremIO provide the balance needed to deploy todays applications.

In this EMC press release http://www.emc.com/a... I was impressed by: 7-year flash endurance protection <-- meaning flash drives will be replaced if they start losing capacity.

this is a great question - I would say in the right workloads all flash will yield optimal performance but of course there's a price

#FlashEveryWhere Important to remember, flash is media. Media that is being leveraged across the EMC product portfolio. It's really all about the application and why our customers are trying to do-EMCs Strength is the diverse portfolio.

dumb question what is the difference between all-flash vs flash-first arrays

It's about 1) how consistent your performance is, 2) what you can do with that for DB services & consolidation without risking prod SLA, 3) how that can accelerate decision support & dev/test workflows. Flash-first can't do these-nor most AFAs

@Crowdfather All flash is all flash - flash first - acknowledges the write to flash and then trickles to disk when appropriate

there are many uses cases for flash all means all and flash first means it works with disc

Depends on the expected usage of the data. If it is WORN data (Write Once Read Never), Flash first & then to disk is lower cost & adequate for performance. As soon as data is reused, using all-flash snapshot arrays becomes a business imperative

See the chart below Jeff - if you can reduce #cores w/ flash it DRAMATICALLY reduces orcl lic & maint costs

License cost from Oracle, depending on how it's purchased, is driven by the CPU. So the driver is CPU consolidation and/or upgrades of CPU for the savings. Flash is a key enabler here as you consolidate more workloads

price of flash is relative to the value re: transactional data vs cold storage

storage cost for Oracle database environments can be looked at from a lot of dimensions, one factor to consider is how many copies of production you will have?

most Oracle lanscapes include a lot of copies of data. In-line data reduction and zero-overhead snap/clone can mean fewer "silos" upping the effective capacity of an array

Considering your total Oracle database landscape of production and copies lets you factor in things like compression and deduplication which can have a big effect on the ultimate end cost.

Another angle on cost/price is if you spend a bit more on flash you can reduce Orcl lic & maint costs http://wikibon.org/w...

What this chart shows is that with flash you can reduce the number of cores required - orcl prices DB based on cores

Oracle is going to take over this space

Not only can you reduce license cost, or do more what what you have, the way applications are tested can be dramatically changed... copies with full production performance - http://www.youtube.c...

The true cost is $/effective capacity. That should include compression, dedupe, space-efficient copies, thin provisioning impact.

Another aspect is the fact that XtremIO storage provisioning is literally 3-mouse clicks. This device is as close to self-service and suitable for app-owners as can be. There is cost savings in the model itself I think

Using deduplication, compression and space efficient snapshots means DBAs can have more databases on AFA arrays but the key is performance remains consistently fast too.

seems like just XtremIO is being mentioned...IBM FlashSystem is best performing AFA on the market with MicroSecond Latencty...with DBs...its all about Latency...

Price is no longer an issue if flash is managed correctly. Compression and deduce work better with flash because flash has much higher access density - helps to reduce cost difference.

@dfloyer so you're saying flash is same cost?

However, real benefit of flash comes from organizing the original data to be shared without having to make endless copies. Avoiding sprawl makes flash cheaper than disk to deploy and manage; very different operational management processes needed

best to reply in the thread under the post by host or introduce new topic; threads = conversations topics

ok

and here's how an optimized infrastructure can impact that time http://wikibon.org/w...

great chart Dave do you see their jobs changing in roles as well?

I think they use freed up time to add value up the applications stack

great point, in Wikibon's experience in talking to DBAs...what is the most valuable investment of a DBA's time?

Jason, helping the productivity of application developers and showing how flash can enable new application functionality - focusing on the art of database design rather than the crisis management of disk based storage

DBAs are interested in solutions that minimize non-idle wait times. Databases on flash is the opportunity to get storage performance closer to CPU performance.

I agree. Driving out the complexity with a all-flash array can eliminate storage tuning and blame storms. Important difference between flash first and all-flash arrays is AFA greatly reduces complexity.